Valve Corporation is one of the well-known video game development companies. The company is responsible for introducing some of the most widely played game titles like Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead and Portal. The company is also responsible for the development and maintenance of the gaming software distribution platform, Steam. Most of the games nowadays are available for purchase on Steam. Even though Steam is developed by Valve Corporation, many game development companies are now using Steam to distribute their game titles. Steam comes integrated with various payment options including PayPal. However, the game distribution platform does not have bitcoin as one of the payment options yet (at least until now).
Gamers may soon be able to buy their favorite game titles on Steam with bitcoin soon. There are speculations that Valve Corporation is working on implementing bitcoin payment option on Steam. According to reports, a Reddit user going by the name Haoose posted a screenshot of codes related to bitcoin payment feature. These codes are said to be part of bitcoin payment processor BitPay’s API.
Even though bitcoin payments are known to be faster than conventional payment methods when it comes to fund transfer across geographical boundaries, that might not be the case here. Bitcoin payments on Steam may take anywhere between few minutes to few days. Wired also speculates that Valve may be an overtly cautious about bitcoin payments and the company may wait till it is sure the whole payment is received. in such cases, people may prefer to use other conventional payment methods instead of bitcoin as they are executed instantly.
If Steam adopts such a policy, then the payment method may not come of much use to the company. Most of the gamers do not like to wait for days before then can get to play the game for which they might have paid days in advance. If Valve Corporation really wants to promote bitcoin adoption, then they should make bitcoin payments smooth and hassle-free.
If the reports about few bitcoins related codes in Steam is true, then we can expect the company to make an announcement regarding the new service soon.